


no more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

by tenderjock



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League (2017), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Bodysharing, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Polyamorous Negotiations, Schizoaffective Disorder, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 23:43:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: Superman dies. Three days later, Bruce still has a headache.





	no more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

**Author's Note:**

> a big, BIG thanks to Jenny iridescentoracle for listening to me yell about this fic and being so good as to look it over for me. couldn't have done it without you! 
> 
> now, people who know me from tumblr may be aware that i am of the position that bruce wayne has schizoaffective disorder, and that i welcome anyone who disagrees to physically fight me. this fic came out of that headcanon and was kinda cathartic to write. hope you enjoy! fic title from paint it, black by the rolling stones.

If someone had asked Batman, three days ago, whether Superman could die, he would have said – _ of course. _ He would have said, _ all living beings have an end _ , that just because other limitations, _ human _ limitations, don’t apply to him doesn’t mean he can’t _ die. _

He would have said all that, and what he really would have meant was – _ no _.

_ A thousand times no _.

: :

The car is waiting for Lois.

She knows that the car is waiting for _ her _, in particular, because when she exits the bodega, arms full of groceries that she’s buying instead of crying in her shower, the window of the black Porsche rolls down and Bruce Wayne sticks his head out.

“Need a ride?” he asks. He looks sleek in his navy suit; not a hair out of place. What Lois would give to feel the way Wayne looked.

She doesn’t, in fact, need a ride. The bodega is only three blocks away from their – her – apartment. It’s why she chose to go here, instead of the big Whole Foods on Memorial Avenue that Clark used to –

Anyway. She didn’t need a ride.

However: she was, first and foremost, Lois Lane, intrepid reporter, and she had a nose for a story. So she nodded politely, climbed into the passenger seat, and allowed Wayne to pile her canvas shopping bags into the back of his overpriced car.

They drove in silence. Lois spent the ride assessing Wayne, and found that her initial evaluation was a little – incorrect. His hair was perfectly groomed and his suit was a sharp as a tailored suit could be, but there were shadows under his eyes, and his fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the steering wheel.

The drive took less than a minute. Lois didn’t ask how Wayne knew where she lived; Clark – he always said that Batman was the most paranoid, and the most prepared, of all of them. For all that the two of them rarely saw eye-to-eye, it was something she knew that Clark respected about him.

Wayne double-parks in front of their – _ her _ – apartment building and hits the lights. Lois has the insane urge to laugh – fucking Gotham drivers. She wrestles the urge down, afraid that once she gives in to laughter, tears will follow. And she’s not crying in front of _ Bruce Wayne, _of all people.

“I’ll help you up,” Wayne says. It’s the first thing he’s said since picking her up.

Lois shrugs. “Sure,” she says. She’s not in the mood to be polite, just for the sake of politeness. Clark would be; Clark’s not around. She feels scrubbed raw, exposed; Wayne being _ here _, where she and Clark spent their life, is bizarre and all too fitting in equal measure.

Wayne takes the heavier bag and motions for her to go ahead. She wants to laugh; to cry; to ask whether he has a key to the apartment, whether he has a key to every part of her life that she once thought was private. Instead, she takes the stairs at her usual determined pace and hears Wayne follow. As she does, she tries to organize her thoughts; to treat it like a particularly tangled story. What was she going to say to Wayne? What needed to be asked?

She reaches the apartment and fumbles in her pocket for the keys. Wayne waits behind her.

There was – the one thing. That he was there – was there, when Clark – died.

Lois exhales slowly and presses her forehead against the cool, grainy wood of the apartment door. That’s the thought that she’s been chasing around for the last three days. _ He was there when Clark died _. She has questions; wants answers; and they all end at the same place. Batman had been there, shoulder to shoulder, with Superman. If anyone could explain it, it would be him.

Lois takes a deep breath and straightens up, wipes her eyes, unlocks the door. Wayne is decent enough not to say anything about her mini-breakdown. Instead, he is silent as he sets down the bags on the kitchen counter.

“You know – “ he says, then breaks off to rub his temples. “You know who I am.” It’s not a question.

“Yes,” Lois says. Then, out of a twisted desire to clear Clark of any blame, when he can’t defend himself: “Clark didn’t tell me. I figured it out on my own. I figured out all the members of the League, actually.”

That dredges up an unwilling smile on Wayne’s face. “Of course you did,” he mutters. He closes his eyes, just for a moment. He has the air of a diver on the edge of the diving board; he looks up and meets Lois’s eyes, just for a moment, for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I should have – stopped him. I should have, and I didn’t, and now –“

He looks around her empty apartment, and Lois wonders how she ever thought that he looked put-together today. He’s lost, as lost as she is, and is trying to hide behind bespoke suits and charm.

“Now we all have to live with it,” he says. Lois shakes her head.

“This is always how it was going to end, with Clark,” she says. “I appreciate your apology, but it’s not necessary. Clark was never one to be talked out of something, once he decided on a course of action.”

Wayne absorbs that for a moment. Lois watches him in profile, the sharp line of his jaw lit by the sunlight streaming through the picture windows. He was quite handsome, although a bit too slippery to be her type. She rolls a thought around for a moment, trying to find the best way to articulate it.

“How long have you been in love with Clark?” she asks. There: sometimes blunt honesty was the best path.

Wayne looks at her, briefly, like a deer in the headlights. “What makes you say I was?” he says. It’s a good response, with just the right amount of disbelief, but Lois is – _ a smart cookie _, as Clark would’ve said.

“Honestly,” Lois says, “I kind of assume everyone was a little bit in love with Clark.”

After a moment, Wayne turns to face her full-on and smiles. It looks forced. “That’s fair.” He checks his watch, more of a perfunctory gesture then an actual need to know the time. “I should be going.”

“Right.” Lois says. She waves an arm toward the door. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Wayne. I know you’re a busy man.”

“I could say the same about you, Ms. Lane,” Wayne says.

He goes to leave, but before he can open the door, Lois blurts out the last, final thing that she wants to – _ needs _ to – know: “Was he – was he scared?”

Wayne freezes, one hand on the doorknob. His head cocks to the side, like he’s listening for something, but he doesn’t turn back around. “He was brave,” he says.

Lois clenches her hands into fists. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

He stands there for a long moment before nodding. “Yes,” Wayne says, “Yes, I believe he was.”

Lois clasps her hands over her mouth to stifle a sob. Without another look or a word, Wayne leaves, carefully closing the door behind him so as not to slam it.

: :

Bruce manages to make it to the lakehouse without crashing into anything, which is a plus. The headache that’s been plaguing him, on and off, for the past few days has returned in full force. He staggers out of the car without closing the door behind him and makes it to the kitchen, where he downs a couple of migraine-relief painkillers and a glass of water. When he’s finished with the water, he fills the glass up again and forces himself to empty it, regardless of the nausea. After that, he pops his meds and dry-swallows.

It feels like his brain was melting out of his ears. The whole room was subtly spinning. His hands are shaking uncontrollably. So, in other words: it was Tuesday.

It takes him a minute or two to realize that he was standing in the kitchen, in the dark, staring at the refrigerator. He shakes his head, then immediately stops when that sends spikes of pain through his skull. Careful not to trip over anything in the dark, Bruce makes his way to the sofa and collapses in a trembling heap.

He’s not sure whether the pain in his head lessens enough for him to fall asleep, or if he just passes out; either way, sleep finds him and takes him under her wing for a brief hour or two.

When he wakes, he wakes with a jolt. Heart pounding, he listens for a moment but doesn’t hear anything beyond the gentle rustle of Alfred in the kitchen. Bruce sits up slowly and drops his head into his hands.

The migraine has expanded; the pain in his head is still there, because _ of course _ it is, but it’s spread to his neck, muscles tightly bunched, and now he’s seeing auras. The room swims. He sits there for a minute, trying to find the will to get up and join Alfred in the kitchen.

_ Hhhhhhhh? _

The sound comes to him, vague and thready, along with a spike of pain over his right eye and a twisting of his stomach. Bruce stills, searching his mind for the source of it; it’s not Jack, he doesn’t think. Bruce doesn’t hallucinate, typically, but intrusive thoughts are common and he knows how to deal with them, regardless of how foolish it makes him feel. He squeezes his eyes shut and gives, out loud, a very firm, “_ No _.”

There’s no reply. Good. It would be just his luck to start presenting new symptoms after almost five years on the same steady cocktail of medications.

He stumbles into the kitchen. Alfred is there, reliably, frying up some eggs on the stovetop. The smell makes Bruce’s stomach turn over. He raises a hand to block the light from the kitchen window.

“Ah,” Alfred says. “Toast, Master Wayne?”

Bruce says something; he’s not sure what. Alfred’s steady hands guide him to bed and he falls, fast and suddenly, into sleep again.

: :

Bruce opens his eyes and knows it was a bad day.

Everything presses down on him like a weighted blanket. His head hurt; his limbs felt heavy. Simply sitting up in bed was a fight. He struggles his way to his feet and struggles further until he reaches the plain toast and water that Alfred has left next to his bed. He forces himself into the kitchen and bends over the sink, feeling sick.

Alfred says something; he doesn’t hear it. Bruce chews down the toast and water, in what feels to be an interminable mouthful of sludge, and manages to somehow wash and dress himself. Every moment seems unsurpassable. He’s not one hundred percent sure how he scraps through the day without throwing up, passing out, or worse.

Before he falls into bad, he snags a bottle of Zin and a handful of Oxy out from Alfred’s nose, somehow. He manages to take his medication before he stumbles to bed, in a moment or maybe a few hours later, and crawls under the cool sheets. As he falls asleep, he repeats in his head, a private mantra: _ I want to live. I want to live. I want to live I want tolive Iwanttolive _ – until it’s true. And it will be true, he knows, someday. Not today, though.

: :

_ Hello? _

_ Hello, is anyone there? I can’t – I don’t know where I am. Can you hear me? _

_ Bruce, can you hear me? _

Bruce wakes up with a start and the vague feeling that someone was calling his name. The headache returns almost immediately, a stabbing pain above his right eye. And Bruce has been stabbed; he knows what it feels like. It’s accompanied by a roiling nausea, probably equal parts the migraine and the wine and opioids he downed last night in the name of soothing himself to sleep.

“Ugh,” he says, trying to fit every ounce of his exhaustion into that syllable. His head throbs. His limbs ache. It feels like his entire body is trying to punish him for the mere crime of being alive.

Bruce (somehow) forces himself to his feet and grinds his way down to the Batcave downstairs. Alfred is already there, tweaking some gizmo or another. Bruce sloshes his way into his chair and lets his muscles dissolve into a relaxed state.

“Feeling better, Master Wayne?” Alfred asks. Bruce lets his head fall onto the keyboard in front of him.

“_ Ugh _,” he says, again, but with more emphasis.

“Ah,” Alfred says. “More water, then.”

Bruce closes his eyes and thanks every deity that might be listening for the continued existence of Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth.

But praying won’t make his headache go away. And they don’t have time to waste, anyway. He’s spent the last two days fucking around, and that’s got to change. They still don’t know where Lex Luthor got the particle accelerator, or what additions he made to it using pilfered Kryptonian technology, or what –

Bruce blinks hard, and clears his throat. Or what, exactly, happened to Clark to make his body _ shred _ –

_ Shred _apart in midair, Bruce the only one close enough to hear his brutal scream in the last few seconds of existence.

Not existence. There was – was no objective proof that Clark was dead, just _ gone _, and who knows what the MacGyvered particle accelerator had done to him, whether he was trapped in another dimension, whether his atoms were sprawled across the universe, whether –

_ Bruce? _

“What,” Bruce says, more in surprise than some genuine answer to the question posed inside his head.

_ Bruce, can you hear me? _

Bruce experiences a momentary flash of déjà vu; what he was remembering, he wasn’t sure, but those words had crossed his mind before, he was sure of it.

“What?” he says again, and while he doesn’t move from his seat in the desk chair, his eyes dart around the room, taking in the Superman mug on the desktop (a gift from Dick), the paperwork Alfred had left next to his right hand (all immaculately detailed with any relevant information Alfred deemed necessary for the case), and the solitary scrap of Clark’s cape, the only remaining vestiges of Superman (only still present because Bruce, as he climbed the steps from Luthor’s control room into the hollow battlefield, had grasped the square of torn red fabric between numb fingers) –

_ Bruce. What are you – Where am I – _

“Who are you?” Bruce says. The terror – sheer, unmitigated terror – that had swelled in his chest at the first sound of a (another) foreign voice inside his head was held at an odd sort of distance from the part of his brain that controlled his mouth. The words, cool and crisp, fell from his mouth with a dazzling detachment.

The voice in his head expressed some kind of confusion. At the question, or at the idea of being addressed, Bruce wasn’t sure. _ I’m – Clark. Kal. _

Oh no, Bruce thought. “Oh no,” Bruce says, and then wants to hit himself.

_ Don’t hit yourself _ , the voice – Clark – _ somebody _ says. Bruce swallows, or attempts to swallow, on a dry throat. The voice inside his head radiates some kind of – warm concern, which does not to assuage the fear of having a _ fucking voice in his head _ claiming to be a dead frien – coworker – _ ally. _

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Bruce says, acutely aware of his hands at his keyboard, his feet in their boots, every inch of his skin, the ringing silence that permeated the Batcave when Alfred was upstairs.

_ No, _ Clark – or someone, rather –, says. _ But I need your help, Bruce. _ Because of course, in any possible iteration of him that Bruce could imagine, Clark had that perfect tone of complete confidence, like he had never had someone tell him _ no _ in his life.

The voice ruffles, a little bit. _ There’s no call to be rude, Bruce. _

“I’m going crazy,” Bruce realizes. He lets his head drop into his hands, then amends: “More crazy, anyway.”

There’s no response from the voice. Bruce waits a minute, heart thumping in his throat.

“Master Bruce?” Bruce jumps about a foot in the air. He’s not sure when Alfred snuck down, but he’s there, with a look that is half professional apprehension and half genuine worry.

“Sir,” Alfred says carefully, “Ms. Prince has called an emergency meeting. She awaits upstairs.”

“Oh,” Bruce says, and wipes compulsively at his face. “I’ll – I’ll be right there.”

“As you wish, sir,” Alfred says, and steps away. Bruce gives himself thirty seconds to pull it together. After that, it doesn’t matter that his limbs feel clumsy and everything looks glassy. It doesn’t matter. He’ll be okay.

: :

Halfway through the Justice League meeting, it becomes abundantly clear that he is very much not okay.

“Batman?” Wonder Woman says, politely. “Did you wish to speak?”

“Uh,” Batman stutters, then clenches his jaw, silenced. When no answer seems to be forthcoming, Wonder Woman reaches across the table and touches his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she asks, voice low enough that it seems a private question, despite the rest of the League sitting just an arms-length away. Batman’s mouth works for a second like he’s trying out a few different answers.

“I’m fine,” he finally grits out. It’s not true; there’s no world in which it’s true, but Wonder Woman nods and gives him back his space.

“As I was saying: we all need time,” she says, “To regroup. To reconsider what this team means. We must decide –“

“No,” Batman says.

Wonder Woman stares at him. “What?”

Batman jerks to his feet, head pounding. “We can’t just – leave him. He would do the same for us, for _ any _ of us.”

There’s a long moment of silence. All the other members of the team exchange glances, quick conspiratorial looks that make the little voice – the _ other _ little voice – in the back of Bruce’s head whisper _ it’s them they’re doing it they don’t want you don’t trust them don’t trustthem don’ttrust – _

Then Wonder Woman stands, a glorious beacon of truth: “He’s gone, Bruce. The only way to move on is to go forward. There’s no going back.”

Batman sits there for a moment, still; he’s not sure that he’s even breathing. He turns his head a fraction of an inch towards Wonder Woman, closes his eyes. Tries to reason out the clenched fist of grief in his gut, the ringing in his head, the wild, untamed _ NO _in his heart.

Wonder Woman must take his silence as an agreement, because she claps him on the shoulder, then quietly leaves to go upstairs. Batman doesn’t move for a long moment.

It isn’t until the entire League has filed out of the room, casting looks at him as they go, that Bruce finds the will in himself to get up. His head hurts; his gut twists; the room spins sickly around him. Everything looks _ slick _in a way that he has never been able to adequately describe.

_ Well, _ the voice in his head says, _ that went well. _

“Shut up,” Bruce mutters under his breath, switching up from a power walk to a flat-out run out of the Hall of Justice and towards the lakehouse. “Shut up, shut up _ shutup _ –“

“Sir?” Alfred says. Bruce jerks, again, for the second time that day. He shakes his head and stumbles towards the entrance of the Batcave, waving Alfred away. It doesn’t stop Alfred from hovering, but he can handle that a hell of a lot better than an attempt to support him as he walks.

_ Bruce –, _the voice in his head says, and Bruce clasps his hands to his ears, as though that would somehow help.

Alfred doesn’t back off, but he knows better than to touch. When Bruce sways suddenly, feeling dizzy for a moment on the staircase leading down to the Batcave, Alfred catches him by the elbow but doesn’t go any further.

“I think,” Bruce says, slowly and clearly, so as not to be misunderstood, “I think I’m going insane.”

His legs give out from beneath him and he sits down, hard, on the steps.

Alfred sits next to him. “Is there any particular reason for this assertion, sir?”

“I,” Bruce says, and, embarrassingly enough, feels himself start to tear up. “I’m hearing – voices. A voice. Clark. I’m hearing Clark inside my head and I think it’s –“ he cuts himself off and scrubs furiously at his face.

“I think it’s my fault,” he says, quiet and drawn. “I think it’s because I let him die.”

Alfred frowns and reaches out, vaguely, as though he’s going to embrace Bruce; he turns away, unconsciously, but before contact is made, Bruce says – says, “You’re so _ dramatic _.”

Bruce freezes. Alfred’s hand lands on his shoulder but he can’t do anything about it because _ that wasn’t him. _ It used his voice and his mouth but it was something else, residing inside his head, and it was like every nightmare he’d ever had since hearing the words _ schizoaffective disorder _ was coming true.

“Oh God,” Bruce says, entirely too aware that Alfred is staring at him, bewildered. “Oh God oh God _ fuck _ fuck oh _ fuck _ –“

Bruce only realizes that he’s hyperventilating when Alfred says, smooth and sure, with the ease that literal decades of caregiving has given him: “In through your nose, sir, relax your shoulders, that’s it, in again –“

Alfred, god bless him, manages to back Bruce down from the edge of a panic attack. Bruce sits with his head between his knees, and _ breathes _ . In a small, forgotten corner of his mind – and Bruce knew that feeling, had felt the stretch and fit of a shared brain before – Clark – _ Clark! – _hunkered down to watch him.

Bruce has always been accused of being withdrawn, unemotional, cold. And sometimes he thinks it’s not the absence of emotion, but rather the constant measuring and labeling of the emotion he does feel, starting when he was a young teenager and continuing to the present, in the form of a weekly coffee with Lee Thompkins. He’s been trained, through martial arts and therapy, that emotion can be quantified.

And anything that can be quantified can be controlled.

He keeps that last point in mind when he considers the problem of Clark.

It’s controllable, he thinks, and cups his face in his hands. _ It’s controllable. _

The voice – _ Clark _ is making a noise – it feels like his head is vibrating with it, his headache doubling down on itself. He’s saying something, but Bruce can only focus on his breathing, _ in – out, in – out, _ and try not to fall apart. When Clark finally settles down and quiets, Bruce sits up. Alfred places a grounding hand on his shoulder.

He has no excuse for what he does next, he really doesn’t. It was curiosity crossed with the desperate need to prove to himself that he wasn’t, in fact, losing his mind. It was the morbid desire to press a bruise, just to see how it hurt.

Picturing his skull as a blank room, Bruce approaches the corner where Clark resides, and – prods him, not-so-gently. There’s a flash of indignation, followed by a slow, queasy ache. Bruce doesn’t realize he’s doubled over again until Alfred’s hand tightens painfully on his shoulder.

“Perhaps,” Alfred says, “You would benefit from another night’s rest, Master Bruce.” It’s got to be two p.m. at the latest, but his bed sounds like exactly what Bruce wants. He manages to work out a grunt, words beyond him at this moment, and follows Alfred’s lead to his room, where he wrestles himself out of his tie and shoes before falling into the warm embrace of sleep.

: :

In his dreams, Bruce falls. He feels the gut-lurching wrench of the descent before he’s catapulted into the plot. He lands, limbs quivering with the kind of exhaustion that dreams don’t solve, right into the thick of it.

“It’s _ suicide _,” Wonder Woman insists, hands clenched into fists. “Kal, you won’t survive that.”

Superman looked out over Metropolis, chin resolute. The energy beams from Lex Luthor’s device sent crackling waves over the city. As she spoke, a beam jetted out and struck into an office building overhead. Everyone within the radius of the device flinched.

“We don’t have a choice,” Superman says. “I’m the only one who can get close enough to turn it off.”

Wonder Woman chews on that for a moment. Batman watches her, and thinks.

“Batman?” Superman says, the edge of a question in the word. Batman opens his mouth – closes it – tries again.

“What do you need me to do?” he finally asks, a gritty growl as soft as it can go. The corner of Superman’s mouth ticks up, but his eyes are – are wild, desperate with it.

Superman reaches out to the two of them, in his infinitely, determinedly _ kind _ way. “I need you to clear a path,” he says. Wonder Woman shakes her head, more of a tick then any real disagreement. She knows about sacrifice, and loss, Batman thinks to himself. That doesn’t mean that she _ likes _ it.

Case in point: she unwinds her lasso from her waist, clasps Superman’s hand briefly, and dives into the fray.

There’s something else – something there. Bruce is vaguely aware that, in real life, he had stepped forward and manned the operating room, watched while Superman stepped forward into empty air and a death sentence, watched as he dissolved into a light show of blue and red – but in the dream, it goes differently.

“Clark,” Bruce says. _ Clark. _ He turns to look at Batman, soft and gilded by the light.

“Bruce,” Clark says, a hint of a smile in his mouth. Bruce watches, arms pinned to his sides, mouth immobile, as a jagged crack appears in the side of his face. He tries to scream; to call out; to struggle, but he can do nothing as Clark crumbles, piece by piece, smile unchanged.

: :

Bruce is dragged into wakefulness unwillingly: he’s on his feet, shuffling towards the kitchen, and it isn’t until his hands have been used to start a pot of coffee that his brain catches up with current events.

“What the hell are you doing?” he says, or means to say. It comes out more as _ whathehelllll _ but who can blame him; the sun’s barely crested the horizon. He should be in bed right now, sleeping the sleep of the overworked and highly medicated. He realizes, distantly, that he forgot to take his meds last night.

_ I’m making a pot of coffee, _ Clark says, much too cheerfully for Bruce’s taste. Bruce frowns.

“No,” he says. “We’re not doing that. And we’re not doing _ this _ , either. You wanna talk to me, you _ talk _.”

“You feel _ less _ crazy when you’re literally talking to yourself?” Clark asks.

“Yes,” Bruce says, and then: “Wait, no, I –“ He can feeling the roiling amusement that precedes Clark’s laughter and is helpless to do anything about it as Clark snickers, using Bruce’s mouth and larynx and throat. Bruce smiles, a little; that’s his own. There’s something about Clark’s good cheer that’s contagious, even considering the fact that the man woke them up at 5:00 in the morning.

He shakes his head. “I’m going back to bed.”

“To _ bed? _” Clark says, like he’s never heard the words. And Bruce had been telling the truth, when he said he prefers Clark to speak out loud, to give tangibility to the concept; but it’s still – disquieting, to feel someone else’s words come out of his mouth.

“In my line of business,” Bruce says, “You learn to appreciate a sleepy morning.”

“And what line of business is that?” Clark shoots back. His frustration with Bruce is sudden and overwhelming, spiny and bitter on the tongue. Bruce closes his eyes for a moment and counts backwards from ten in English, Mandarin, Urdu. Clark’s annoyance mounts; he understands, viscerally, what Bruce is doing and doesn’t appreciate being treated like a child, when Bruce is the one –

The one who _ what _ ? The one who just wants to be _ fixed _ , who wants to have his fucking _ body _ back?

Clark releases a short exhale. “Okay,” he says, a concession. “Back to bed. But we leave the curtains open.” There, the barest train of thought – _ the sun _–

Bruce may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. He knows an olive branch when he sees it.

And – _ the sun _ – Clark knows that the sun will do nothing for him, in this body. But he still –

_ I miss it. _ Ah. There it is.

There’s another thing: Clark seems to be much more coherent just in the time it took Bruce to have one semi-full night of sleep. The headache is back, with a vengeance, a rusty nail above his eye, but Clark’s thoughts have been clearer, more complete. Bruce can’t call that a coincidence.

He sits, and then lies down. Clark hums quietly in the back of his brain, and Bruce cannot even think of it as an imposition. It feels – natural, more natural with every minute to lasts, and Bruce knows that they have to fix this, whatever this is, soon.

Clark arches into the pale morning light, softly yearning. But to Bruce’s body, sunlight was just sunlight. And that’s the crux of it: Clark could not survive in this human body, and Bruce could not survive having Clark’s head in his brain.

He closes his eyes. He knows what he has to do.

: :

Several hours later, they wake. Bruce only feels kind of dead, as opposed to completely dead, and –

_ Dead – _

Clark recoils, quiet humming horror inside his head. Bruce’s body is frozen, halfway into taking his socks off. “Sorry,” Bruce says aloud, voice still rough with sleep. He can feel Clark receive his apology, measure, accept, and shove down his disquiet. Clark clears his throat.

“No,” he says. “No, it’s – it’s just something that I don’t like to talk about.”

Then they won’t talk about it, Bruce thinks. This experience has already gotten dangerously close to therapy several times; he has no wish to air out his many psychiatric flaws with Clark.

The soft glow of appreciation in his chest. He rubs a spot just above his heart for a moment, then continues the process of stripping for his shower.

Alfred has left him a mini laboratory in the bathroom. Bruce takes a plethora of samples and measurements, then brushes his teeth with the last bit of toothpaste in the tube. After, he packs the samples up in their box, pausing for a moment to look at the urine sample. There was nothing particularly abnormal about it; nevertheless, he knew it was a necessary step in the process of getting better.

It didn’t feel like getting better. It felt like piss in a bottle.

He gets in the shower, turning the hot water up as high as it will go, and dissociates for a while. Clark has established a little place in the far corner of his brain, and appears to be reciting verb patterns in Kryptonian.

After sufficiently boiling himself, and once the last of the shampoo has rinsed from his hair, Bruce steps out of the shower, wraps a towel around his waist, and wipes at the condensation on the full-length mirror. In the back of his mind, he feels a little – flicker, of interest, mostly directed at his abs.

Bruce pauses. Clark has settled back down and is blandly inattentive, as though that thought had never occurred. But Bruce wasn’t mistaken; it was just – unexpected.

“Hmm,” he says. Clark curls up in embarrassment, but it has a smug edge to it.

“Anyway,” Clark says. He smiles with Bruce’s mouth and it looks – different. Bruce isn’t a fan.

“Anyway,” Clark says again, “Are we going to fix this thing or not?”

Bruce’s mood immediately turns sour. “Yes,” he says, watching his own face move in the mirror. “I have to make a call.”

: :

Barbara isn’t thrilled about hearing from him out of the blue. “What do you want?” she asks, words clipped. Bruce takes a breath into his nose and out his mouth. He hadn’t really expected her to be happy about it, but he had – hoped, he guesses.

Bruce remembers when Babs was a stubborn teenager, working out riddles with Dick while he and Alfred sipped espresso and pretended they weren’t listening. He briefly considers asking how her day’s going, and decides not to risk it. Instead, he frowns at the oil gauge of the Batmobile.

A flicker of laughter from Clark. _ Batmobile _.

“I need someone who can deal with a problem related to bodysharing.”

“What, you have another voice inside your head?” It’s a little bit cruel, but Bruce supposes he deserves it. He sticks his hand in the engine to drain the oil. When he doesn’t answer immediately, Barbara’s voice turns just a touch concerned.

“B? What’s going on?”

“Do you know somebody who might be able to help?” he grits out. He adjusts the ice pack taped over his forehead, probably getting engine grease all over his face. Clark is – _ hovering _, is the only word for it, insatiably curious but polite enough to pretend that he isn’t.

Barbara sighs, raspy across the phone. “Dick might know somebody,” she says finally. “I’ll send you her contact info.”

“Thanks,” he says, but she’s already hung up. Clark hums.

“That went well,” he says. There’s a hint of a question in his words.

“We aren’t – it’s complicated,” Bruce tells him. Dismissive, except for the fact that it’s _ right there _, in his brain, for Clark to see, a festering open wound of his soul – that he aches for the days when Babs was like family, when he raised her right alongside Jim, when the Batcave was a constant whirlwind of action and laughter, so different than the quiet tomb it was today – 

Clark hums again, this time understanding.

“I have a few of those, too,” Clark says. Bruce snorts.

“Not like this.”

Clark moves to push his glasses further up his nose, and winds up poking Bruce in the eye with an oily finger. “Ouch,” Clark and Bruce say in unison. Then Clark makes a face – and it’s still so _ weird _, to feel his body following commands that he isn’t giving – and says, “That’s a problem with you, isn’t it?”

“What’s a problem?” Bruce says, already defensive and annoyed at himself for it.

“You can’t accept the idea that other people might be able to relate to your problems.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Bruce responds. His face frowns, and it’s him doing it this time but it still feels wrong.

“Of course you don’t.” Clark adjusts the icepack to press more firmly against his temple. They both sigh in momentary relief. “Still, maybe you should try.”

“Try what?”

_ To understand, _ Clark says, and it’s funny, the way Bruce knows exactly what he means. It’s like standing at the edge of a pool, about to dive in; the water, deep and cool, his toes on the line, nothing to do but step – step –

Bruce closes his eyes and – _ expands _.

Clark’s mind feels _ alien _ , in a way that Clark himself has never seemed. Its dimensions are foreign to Bruce; there are layers of emotion and memory wrapped up in razor-wire instinct, and he can feel Clark’s frustration with this messy human body, all hair and flesh and mucus, can _ feel _ it when Clark goes to use his X-ray vision and _ can’t _, when he reaches out for the drumbeat of Lois Lane’s heartbeat and doesn’t find it.

Bruce had wondered, both idly and – not idly, whether Kryptonians _ felt _ like humans did. And the answer to that question was now proven to be _ yes _ – God, but it was yes.

Clark stirred at that thought. “You thought I didn’t have _ feelings? _” he asks, indignant.

“Well,” Bruce says, then reconsiders his response. Clark starts to laugh – and isn’t that so _ Clark _, to be faced with an insult and find a way to laugh it off?

After a moment, though, Clark turns somber. “We need to tell the League,” he says. Bruce has a moment of full-on panic, face flushed, heart pounding, hands shaking, without warning or hesitation.

“We can’t,” he says, helplessly. He clenches his hands into fists to stop the tremors. It only kind of works.

Clark radiates cool, crystalline reassurance. Bruce clings to it like a life preserver. “At least Lois,” Clark says. Behind the soothing touch of his mind is the steely determination that Bruce has come to associate with Superman. “I need to tell Lois.”

Bruce takes a deep breath, eyes closed, shoving down Jack into the far corner of his brain, as they whisper _ can’t trust don’t trust they want to hurt you can’t trust – _

“Who’s Jack?” Clark asks. With his eyes closed, Bruce can _ see _ the words painted across the inside of his eyelids. Clark is bold streaks of red and gold, a subtle shine to it.

“Jack,” Bruce says, “Is the name of the sentient pool of sludge that lives in the back of my head.”

“Okay, uh.” Clark goes to shove his glasses up his nose, again, and ends up poking Bruce in the eye, again. “Uh, quick question: what the _ fuck _?”

“You don’t want to know,” Bruce says, letting his face fall into his hands. Clark hums.

After a moment of self-pity, Bruce straightens up, tugs the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt down over his wrists, and picks up the phone to make the second unwanted call of the day. This is becoming a pattern, he thinks to himself. In the corner of his mind, Clark snorts; he’s more than done with Bruce’s defeatism.

“Maybe a text,” Bruce says aloud.

Clark rolls his – their – eyes. “Sure,” he agrees, a touch of sarcasm in his tone. And that’s odd – that Clark’s sarcasm, in Bruce’s voice, sounds _ different _ from Bruce’s sarcasm. Bruce has Lane’s number written down somewhere, but it’s easier to just let Clark plug it into his phone and write _ Bruce Wayne – need to talk. V important. _

Clark runs his fingers over the screen of the phone. It occurs to Bruce that Clark is just as terrified about all of this as he is. He feels – shame, maybe, that it took him so long to figure that out.

“Don’t feel bad,” Clark says, soft. “I’m used to hiding it.”

Wordless, Bruce squeezes his hands together, in a mockery of a handshake. Clark stirs, warm appreciation welling up in his chest. His head is still pounding, he’s hanging onto his sanity by a thread, but for just a moment, Bruce feels fine.

“Let’s see what Alfred made for lunch,” Bruce says. Clark squeezes his hand back, and then they head up to the kitchen to grab a bite while they wait for Lane to text back.

: :

He’s in the upstairs bathroom, ostensibly washing engine grease off his hands, actually running cold water over the pulse point of his wrist, when he takes a step to the side to grab a towel and directly into the bad angle of his left knee. The pain momentarily drowns out the pain in his head. Clark comes roaring to the forefront of his mind, and that, combined with the sheer _ hurt _, makes Bruce’s ears ring a little bit.

_ What, _ Clark starts, and Bruce makes a low hurt noise in the back of his throat. Clark quiets down and just watches, a secondary presence in Bruce’s brain. And the thing is – the thing is –

Bruce was well past his physical peak, and the stress he’s placed on his body for the last twenty-five years has wrecked his knees, his shoulders, his spine. He can imagine what it must be like to share his body, after a lifetime of perfect health.

Something so fragile, so flawed – _ broken _, or on the verge of breaking, must be –

– beautiful. It was Clark’s word, not his; Bruce shied away from it.

“My mom never told you about my childhood, did she?” Clark asks. He traces the scar on Bruce’s shoulder through his shirt, curious. Bruce looked away. “When I was a kid, I got _ every _ cold that came around. I was sick more than I was well. Ma and Pa – they didn’t talk about it in front of me, but I know they worried that each and every bug I caught would kill me, being as I wasn’t – human.”

Bruce swallows. He can feel the burnt-coffee taste of that admission; even now, after years had passed, after Superman was the world’s darling, it _ hurt _ Clark to admit that he wasn’t human.

Clark shifts, uncomfortable with the scrutiny._ Pot, kettle _, Bruce thinks at him, and Clark gives off a flash of begrudging acknowledgment. They check Bruce’s W14+ again, but there’s no response from Lane. She hasn’t even opened the message yet.

“She requested a week off to visit family,” Bruce says aloud. Clark hums.

“I know Lo,” he says, “And just because she’s got time off doesn’t mean that she won’t be working. She’s a little – ” _ like you _, is what goes unsaid, but Bruce hears it all the same.

Bruce goes to open his email on his phone and freezes, finger just above the app icon, as a wave of anxiety catches him in its crest. There’s a moment of wordless confusion from Clark, and then Bruce is on the floor, curled into a ball, hyperventilating.

Jack is back in his ear, only this time they’re _ screaming _, and Bruce doesn’t – he doesn’t –

It’s almost dreamlike, the way the answer comes to him, outside of the panic. His hands are shaking so hard that it’s difficult to pick up the razor. The light is bright, painfully so, and he squints at the inside of his left forearm, aiming the first cut just below the crook of his elbow.

All the voices in his head clamor for his attention but the second the razor blade meets flesh, they quiet in a glorious surge of pain. Bruce gasps, feeling a slow curl of _ calm _ in his gut.

Which is immediately drowned out by Clark’s _ DROP THE FUCKING RAZOR _.

Bruce drops it without thinking, then backs up from the sink until his back hits the bathroom door. He lets out a slow, low exhale and catches his own eye in the mirror. He looks – wild, unhinged. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked at himself after self-harming, he realizes, muffled, like it’s happening to someone else.

_ What the fuck, _ Clark bites off, crisply, _ was that _.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce says, letting his head loll forward so that his chin rests on his chest. He’s breathing hard, but he can feel the confusion abate, low rolling fog burnt off by the sun.

“I think it really does matter,” Clark says aloud. He’s clutching the inside of Bruce’s left forearm with his right hand. Little drops of blood are welling up in the shallow cut – really more of a scratch. “I’d like to know if you were feeling, feeling _ suicidal _ , or _ dangerous – _”

“I’m not going to _ off myself _ when I’ve got someone else stuck in my head,” Bruce grits out, gripping the edge of the bathroom sink until his knuckles turn white.

“That wasn’t actually what I was talking about, but thanks for thinking I’m so self-centered as to think –” Clark shoots back, until Bruce cuts him off.

“To think that maybe the _ raving lunatic _ would finally _ snap _ –”

“I was _ worried _ about you!” Clark yells. Bruce has the barest second to reflect on how _ monumentally fucked up _it is that he’s berating himself, technically speaking, before Clark turns unfairly soft: “I was worried about you, you asshole. I just –” Clark runs his fingers over the shallow cut on the inside of Bruce’s forearm. “I just don’t understand why you would do this to yourself, if you weren’t wanting to – kill yourself.”

“I prefer to think of it as a sort of affirmation of life,” Bruce says. At Clark’s unspoken question, he clarifies: “You can’t – hurt, if you’re dead. And the pain makes everything more – manageable. Understandable.”

A starburst of empathy from Clark. _ It simples things up. _

“Yeah,” Bruce says. He lets his head drop and tucks his chin into his chest. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Clark touches the cuts again and says, softly, pleadingly, “There must be a better way of doing this.”

“There –” Bruce begins, then reconsiders. There’s no point in defending his actions; Clark already knows his defense, and therefore, knows the holes in it. “There is. I know. I just fell back in to some – bad habits, is all.”

It was the same thing as before – the morbid desire to press a bruise. To hurt, just for the sake of it. To break himself down, and to build himself back up. Ice crushing beneath his fists – to throw his body to the sky, just to see if he will fall.

Bruce cocks his head. Clark’s radiating a sort of warm understanding; he reaches out and runs his fingers over Bruce’s reflection in the mirror. “Okay,” he says, soft, gentle in a way that Bruce hasn’t earned. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

: :

At three in the morning, the phone buzzes.

Bruce and Clark jolt entirely into wakefulness, adrenaline coursing through their – his – veins.

_ Their _ . It’s getting all too easy to think about this thing of theirs as being a permanent state. And it’s not – it’s not _ bad, _ exactly, in the way that Bruce would think bodysharing with someone would be bad. But it’s Clark, and he needs, the _ world _needs, Clark back. There isn’t another option.

Anyway: the phone buzzes, and they read the text. It’s from Lane.

_ ok 8.30 am che’s cafe 101 n st _

“Does she always type like this?” Bruce asks. Clark just sighs. His exasperation is tempered by the raw affection welling up in their chest.

“Yes,” Clark says, “She’s brilliant, isn’t she?”

Bruce lets his eyes slip closed, trying to think past the pain in his head. Without looking, he fishes a bottle of pills and a half-finished Gatorade out from the floor next to the bed and pops a couple, washing them down with warm Cool Blue.

They need a plan. And here’s the thing: if there’s one fact that Bruce has learned in the years of working shoulder-to-shoulder with Superman, it’s that they can rarely agree on any one plan. Bruce has always seen things as a straight line, the bright path between A and B, and it – frustrated him, this thing with Clark. Clark saw rings around everything.

Clark wants to trust Lane. He wants to tell her everything, and figures that somehow, somehow, Lane will look at Bruce Wayne’s body speaking with her husband’s voice and not call the cops on them.

“I don’t know,” Clark says. “I’d say she’s more liable to mace you.”

“That isn’t funny,” Bruce says, even though it kind of is. “We need a plan.”

“So you’ve said. Well, not _ said _, exactly –”“

Bruce exhales through his nose, thinking. They’re meeting Lois at a public location during rush hour. From what he knows of her – from what _ Clark _ knows of her – she’s more than willing to make a scene in public if she needs to, if she feels unsafe. So they have to figure out a way to get her guard down.

_ I have an idea _, Clark says, complete with a picture of himself hopping up and down, arm raised.

“What,” Bruce shoots back, rubbing his temples in a misguided attempt to make the world stop hurting so much.

Clark tells him. Bruce considers it for a long moment, feeling himself start to smile.

: :

Of course, their plan falls apart minutes into its inception, mostly due to Lois Lane’s killer – absolutely _ killer _, even Bruce has to admit – journalistic skills.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Lane says, hand in her purse, presumably holding that can of mace.

“Wait,” Bruce says, hands raised. He tries to look unintimidating, which is hard to do when he’s a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she is. “Look, we don’t have to go meet Zatara. I just – _ we _ just thought it would be easier to hear from her.”

“We?” Lane asks, the set of her shoulders changing. She could smell a story, Bruce thought.

“Clark and I,” Bruce says. “He’s – he’s alive. And we’re figuring out a way to get him back.”

“Back from where?” Her eyes narrow, but her hand eases its way out of her purse.

Bruce taps a finger on the temple that hurts the least, which is kind of a relative thing. “In here.”

Lane’s hand drops back into her purse. “Fuck off,” she says. Clark surges forward, unceremoniously shoving Bruce aside. It says something to how well they’ve been cohabiting that Bruce goes without fuss or struggle.

“Lois,” Clark says desperately, “It’s _ me. _”

Lane flinches back. “This isn’t funny,” she says, but it’s uncertain, knocked off-kilter. Bruce pounces on that hesitation, grasping one of her hands. Clark runs a gentle finger over the ring that she was still wearing.

“I swear, Lo,” Clark says, “I don’t know how to prove it to you.”

Lane takes a step forward, looks deep into his – their – eyes. “This,” she says, then wets her lips and continues: “This is your world. Right?”

Clark laughs, just a little. Bruce can feel the yellow balloon of Clark’s sheer, unbounded _ joy _ swelling inside his chest. “ _ You _ are my world,” he says, and then catches Lois’s mouth in a warm kiss.

After a moment, Lane goes stiff and pulls away. Bruce runs the tip of his tongue over his teeth and grimaces; it wasn’t the worst kiss he’d ever had, but there was always something off-putting about kissing someone who wished they were kissing someone else.

“Let’s not try that again,” Lois says; Bruce nods. Clark, in the back of his brain, hummed quietly. Bruce got a flash of _ I don’t mind – _before Clark quashed that thought.

“Now,” Bruce says, “We just have to convince everybody else.” Jack squirms in the back of his brain but the paranoia is easier to ignore with Clark right there, a warm source of sunshine, and Lois by his side, steady and resolute.

: :

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Diana asks. Bruce and Clark both shrug.

“Honestly, I thought I was just going crazy,” Bruce says.

It’s odd; the whole confrontation with the League was kind of a letdown, after all the angst that had gone on inside Bruce’s brain for the last several days. They accepted his claims pretty much at face value, with minimal questioning. Lois is standing next to him, holding his hand, which feels – nice, he guesses. It’s been a while since anyone held his hand.

Barry edged forward. “Do you have, like, Kal’s powers? Can you fly? Can you smile?”

“No,” Bruce says. “To all of that.” Zatara should be here soon; he gave her explicit directions, through Dick, to the League’s headquarters, and the alarm system has been calibrated to let her in.

“Can we talk to Kal?” Arthur says. He’s been mostly quiet, just watching first Bruce’s face, then Lane’s.

Bruce takes a step back into his own mind and Clark slides forward. “Sure thing,” he says, lifting his chin to an angle that is so undeniably _ Clark _that Bruce wants to laugh. How had he ever doubted it?

The entire League goes silent and wide-eyed for a moment. Diana breaks the still with a clap on the shoulder and a nod. “Kal,” she says, looking intently into his – their – face, “Forgive me for doubting you. It is beyond a pleasure to have you back, my brother-in-arms.”

“Yeah, man,” Barry says, “What she said.”

Before either Clark or Bruce could reply, there’s a flash of purple light and the smell of violets permeates the room. Bruce – and everyone else in the room, he supposes – tenses, but it’s only a woman matching Zatanna Zatara’s description standing there.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m here for B.”

“That’s me,” Bruce says, stepping forward to shake her hand with his un-Loised one. She takes it, and then cocks her head to the side.

“Ah,” she says, “You’re the bodysharer, then.” Bruce nods. “Who with?” she asks.

“Superman,” Lois says. Her small hand curls compulsively in Bruce’s.

“Ah,” Zatara says again, but with a different tone. She pulls a large briefcase out of nowhere and opens it to reveal a selection of odds and ends – crystals, rusty nails, scraps of velvet – and pulls out a piece of white chalk. She gets to work drawing a large circle around them.

“Been getting headaches?” Zatara says.

“_ Yes _,” says both Bruce and Clark. Zatara nods.

“That’s because the human body isn’t equipped to hold more than one consciousness. That should go away as soon as the two of you are split.”

“How long will that take?” Clark asks.

Zatara finished her circle and raises a hand, goes quiet and tense for a moment. “_ Etarapes _,” she intones.

“That’s it?” Clark says, and then yelps. Bruce has a moment of disorientation at the novel fact that Clark’s voice is coming from outside his head; he looks over at the newly-rebodied Clark, who is absolutely naked and bright red over it.

Bruce allows himself one long second of appreciation before getting back to business.

Diana is stepping towards Clark with a blanket. He wraps it loosely around his waist before catching Lois by the wrist and pulling her into a kiss. Bruce looks away.

The rest of the League has formed a tiny mob around Clark; Bruce can only imagine the public’s reaction to the news that Superman is back from the dead, again. _ Can’t even die right _ , Bruce thinks, and it’s so quintessentially _ Clark _ that he wants to laugh.

But: in this moment, he is ignored. He steps back, curls his empty hand into a tight fist and then relaxes it. Clark meets his eye from across the room and mouths, of all things, _ thank you _. Bruce nods stiffly.

This isn’t the end of this. There are things to be done: research, on the origins of the bodysharing and the mechanism through which it was ended, the next round against Luthor – they need to talk about it, all of it, if only in an effort to craft a greater understanding of what being a part of this team means.

: :

They never do talk about it.

: :

It’s eleven twenty on a Sunday morning, and Clark is debating whether he needs to run to the bodega to get more milk when there’s a knock at the door. He should have been paying attention, because maybe then he wouldn’t be blindsided by the steady drum of Bruce’s heartbeat on his doorstep.

He opens the door and for a moment they just stare at each other. Then Bruce raises a hand holding a bouquet of lilies (Lois’s favorite, Clark thinks, and wonders whether Bruce plucked that from his mind, or researched it on his own, or just fucking guessed, and he guesses he’ll never know the answer to that now – )

“Can I come in?” Bruce says. Clark frowns at him for a long second, weighing his options.

“Sure,” Clark says eventually, stepping aside. Bruce walks into the kitchen like he – like he _ belongs _ there, and it does something to Clark’s stomach. Not something bad, just – something.

So he walks into the kitchen and right smack in the middle of the other problem that Clark had this morning, which is the fact that Jimmy Olsen has been crashing on their couch for the last few days as he and Lois – and Clark, too, he supposes, although he’s coming at it from a different angle – work on a piece about the return of Superman.

Clark hates the scrutiny but concedes that it’s the price of being a public figure. It’s enough to make a man want to head to his secret alien fortress in the Antarctic and live out his life as an extra-terrestrial hermit. It’s enough to put him in a bad mood, at least, and maybe Bruce doesn’t deserve that.

Jimmy is sitting at the kitchen island, where he’s been eating his weight in cereal and waiting on the coffee to finish brewing. He looks up when they come in. There’s a moment of silence.

“Is that Bruce Wayne?” Jimmy asks, squinting like that would somehow make the fact of Bruce being there understandable. Clark had been trying to understand Bruce for months; squinting didn’t do shit.

“Yes,” Bruce says. Jimmy nodded slowly, dragging his spoon along the bottom of his empty bowl.

“Okay,” he says, and then: “Okay. Clark, I ate all of your Lucky Charms.”

“Somehow, I’ll find the strength to live on,” Clark says. They all stand there awkwardly for a moment before Jimmy figures it out and mumbles something, fleeing to the living room.

“So,” Clark begins, with no idea where he is going with it.

“So,” Bruce says, and he _ looks _ fine, supremely confident in that dashing way that Brucie Wayne always is, that rich-and-privileged sheen to him, but if there is something that Clark has learned the past week, it is that what Bruce _ looks like _ and what Bruce _ feels _ are very frequently two very different things.

If there is something else that Clark has learned this past week, it is this: Bruce was a tightly-wound Rolex Daytona of a man. But that should not – could not – be confused for _ heartless _. He had heart; he was tearing apart at the seams from it.

Clark shifts on his feet. “Was expecting you earlier,” he says. Then, before Bruce can answer: “Or maybe later. Hard to tell.”

“Well,” Bruce says, “As long as you were expecting me any time except now.” Clark releases a short exhale that is half amusement, half irritation. Funny how those two emotions seem to collide whenever he’s around Bruce.

Clark notices that somehow, without him realizing it, Bruce has positioned himself between Clark and the door. He’s also very close, now. Clark would call it _ uncomfortably _close if he hadn’t just spent several days inside the man’s brain.

“Do you want Thai for lunch?” Lois calls from the living room. It doesn’t break the tension; if anything, the room seems smaller, tighter, the air closer. “Jimmy’s leaving for work,” Lois adds.

“Thai sounds good,” Clark says, too loud. He maintains eye contact with Bruce. Neither of them seems to be breathing. “Bye, Jimmy.” Bruce shifts half a step closer, until Clark can feel the warmth radiating off of his body. He wets his lips.

“I – I miss you,” Bruce says, low and tense. Clark hesitates, for a moment, then reaches out to run his fingers from Bruce’s collarbone, exposed by the V-neck sweater he was wearing, up the line of his neck and to his jaw. Bruce swallows; Clark watches the movement of his throat.

“I know what you mean,” Clark murmurs, and cups Bruce’s face to pull him into a long, deep kiss.

They break apart after a moment and stand there, forehead to forehead, just breathing. Clark moves to pull away but Bruce makes a tiny noise of protest, so he leans back in.

“So, uh,” Clark says. His nose brushes Bruce’s. “I was reading that right, right?”

Bruce snorts. “Yes,” he says, “You very much read that right.”

“Good,” Clark replies, “Because that was about to be really awkward if I hadn’t.”

“What about – “ Bruce says, before cutting himself off. Clark thinks it might be the bodysharing, but it might be just the two of them, because Bruce doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Clark lets his hand drop to the back of Bruce’s neck and squeezes, gently.

“I can have you and Lois,” Clark says, before stepping back so he can see Bruce’s face clearly. He frowns, but not like he’s mad; more like he’s laying out all the options and evaluating them, in that _ Bruce _ way of his.

Lois does the same thing, Clark thinks, and has to fight a smile. It seems that he has a type.

“Well,” Bruce finally says. “I can live with that.” He shoots Clark a little glance, one eyebrow raised, and Clark can’t help it: he laughs.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Clark says, crossing his arms.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Bruce asks, slightly (slightly) defensive. Clark uncrosses his arms, then recrosses them again.

“I don’t know. Just,” Clark says, “Just that you’re a lot to deal with.”

“Too much?”

Clark tilts his head, considering, then: a hint of a smile. “No. Not quite.”

Bruce’s mouth ticks up in the corner and he tugs Clark in for another kiss. It’s soft, tender in a way that Clark would never have figured for Bruce before this last week. They press up against each other in the kitchen, next to the fridge, kissing until Bruce has to pull away for air, and Clark presses his lips gently to Bruce’s cheeks, nose, eyes.

Quiet enough that only Clark hears it, Lois _ tsks _. He can hear the rustling of paper that is probably a menu. He doesn’t see her face, but he can imagine the smile curling into the corner of her mouth.

“So, I guess that means we’re ordering takeout for three,” Lois calls from the other room, and Clark clutches Bruce close, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm tenderjock as well on tumblr; if you liked this fic, maybe give me a follow. i'm very into various fandoms, but i'm always down to talk about dc, if only the little corner of it that i know.


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